mlh global hr consulting View our Blog
You are here: Home >> Blog

Dual Career Structures - creating a community


As the third in my trio of commentaries on Dual Career Structures I wanted to focus on the value add side of the investment. In the 'why have them' note I have given the business and individual benefits. This article is concerned with increasing the value to the individuals and the organistion through the creation of energy and a community.

Sole contributors, by the very nature of their job and potentially, their work style preferences, can tend to become isolated from the more managerial side of the organisation. Yet with a dual career structure they are able to achieve very senior positions and as a minimum need to be positioned as technical leaders and experts. More importantly, their expertise needs to be fully harnessed for the benefit of the organisation. Creating a dialogue with them as individuals and a group can increase their influence on the organisation to everyone's benefit.

Some ideas that can be considered:

  • Holding an annual conference. Inviting them to management conferences is not helpful - they are by definition not managers. Yet the 'annual leadership conference' is a critical forum in an organistion - it provides two way dialogue, strategic direction and networking and community building. This is an opportunity for your most senior experts to meet and share ideas. Discussions on their particular specialism are not particularly relevant since they are not likely to be of broad interest but discussion on processes, challenges, innovation and innovating, thought leadership etc are all highly appropriate and will bring value to the individuals and the organisation.
  • Allowing them to take responsibility for the encouragement of deep expertise within the organistion. For example, creating and sponsoring science and technology awards is an excellent accountability that can be passed to this community. Not only does it have the experts judging and encouraging the next generation but it also divorces it from normal management/HR processes which can frequently bog down award giving
  • Using this group to drive or support technology foresight/horizon scanning for the oganistion - once again it plays to their strenghts and allows their expertise to influence the organistions strategic direction
  • Giving them the budget for all technical/specialist conferences - thus allowing the organistion to spend wisely in this are and capture learning from their attendance.

For some of these suggestions (and these are necessarily only some examples) requires your dual career appointees to organise themselves. It may be appropriate to give them some facilitation support (an HR person can provide this) and ease them through some of the early challenges. In my experience, a light touch by the sponsoring Director is all that is needed, and mostly this is to help keep things simple.

Final comment. As an HR professional I have had the opportunity to develop a number of these dual career structures. I have found this to be hugely enjoyable and rewarding. Releasing the energy of individuals in a way which benefits them and the organisation is probably one of the most attractive aspects of HR work - and with this community you can see it in action.



Published by: Lisette on 05/07/2009 - Add a comment

Sorry, comments are now closed on this post

Back to top